The six relatives (Liu Qin) in Six Lines divination explained

In Six Lines divination, every line of a hexagram is labelled with one of five "relatives" (六親, liuqin): Parents, Siblings, Offspring, Wealth and Officer. The label comes from comparing the element of the line's earthly branch with the element of the hexagram's palace. Once the lines are labelled, a question about a job, money, a document or a person can be pointed at a specific line — that is what makes Six Lines work.

Why "six" relatives when there are five?

The name is borrowed from the everyday Chinese word for one's close kin, and manuals do not agree on why it says "six". In practice the chart uses five labels, each describing how a line relates to the palace element — "me" — while the asker's own position is marked separately by the shi line.

The rule: everything is measured from the palace

Each hexagram belongs to one of eight palaces, and the palace has an element: Qian and Dui are metal, Zhen and Xun wood, Kan water, Li fire, Gen and Kun earth. Call that element me. Then, for each line, take the element of its branch (子 water, 寅 wood, 午 fire, 申 metal, 辰 earth and so on) and ask how it relates to me in the five-phase cycle:

• What generates me is Parents (父母).
• What I generate is Offspring (子孫).
• What I control is Wealth (妻財, literally "wife and wealth").
• What controls me is Officer (官鬼, "officials and ghosts").
• What shares my element is Siblings (兄弟).

The point that trips beginners up: the reference is the palace, not the trigram the line sits in, and not the hexagram's own name. Changed lines produced by moving lines are also labelled from the original hexagram's palace.

A worked example

Hexagram 1, Qian is the head of the Qian palace, so its element is metal. Its lines, bottom to top, carry 子, 寅, 辰, 午, 申, 戌:

• 子 water: metal generates water — Offspring.
• 寅 wood: metal controls wood — Wealth.
• 辰 earth: earth generates metal — Parents.
• 午 fire: fire controls metal — Officer.
• 申 metal: same element — Siblings.
• 戌 earth — Parents again.

Now compare Hexagram 11, Tai. Its lower trigram is also Qian, so its first line is the same 甲子 water. But Tai belongs to the Kun palace, whose element is earth, and earth controls water — so in Tai that very same line is Wealth, not Offspring. The branch did not change; the palace did. This is why you cannot label a line without first finding the palace (see Jing Fang's eight palaces).

What each relative stands for

The manuals give each relative a wide range of meanings. Which one applies depends entirely on the question.

Parents (父母)

Parents, elders, and anyone who shelters or supports you; also documents, contracts, certificates, letters and news, a house, a vehicle, clothing — the things that cover and protect. It can also mean toil and labour: the effort of looking after something.

Siblings (兄弟)

Brothers, sisters, friends, peers and colleagues — and competitors. Because Siblings controls Wealth in the cycle, the manuals often read it as spending, rivalry for the same resource, or money slipping away.

Offspring (子孫)

Children, students and juniors, pets; also ease, enjoyment and relief. Offspring is called the "star of blessing" (福德) because it controls Officer, so it dissolves pressure and trouble. That same property makes it unwelcome in a question about a job or position.

Wealth (妻財)

Money, income, goods and possessions, and the things you manage. In the traditional, gendered scheme it also stands for a wife or girlfriend when a man asks about a relationship. Wealth controls Parents, so a strong moving Wealth line can work against a document or a home matter.

Officer (官鬼)

A job, a position, an employer, authority, rules and formal institutions; for a woman asking about a relationship, traditionally the husband or boyfriend. The "ghost" half of the name covers trouble, pressure and worry. Whether Officer is welcome depends on the question: for a career question it is the very thing you want to see strong; for a question about peace of mind, a strong moving Officer is the source of the strain.

The relatives act on each other

Because the labels come from the five phases, they inherit its two cycles:

• Generating: Parents → Siblings → Offspring → Wealth → Officer → Parents.
• Controlling: Parents control Offspring, Offspring control Officer, Officer controls Siblings, Siblings control Wealth, Wealth controls Parents.

This is where the method gets its reasoning. If your question is about money, Wealth is your focus; Offspring, which generates Wealth, is its helper; Siblings, which controls Wealth, is its threat. Those roles — the focus, the source that feeds it, the force that harms it — are the subject of the use spirit.

Go back to Qian. For a career question the focus is Officer, the 午 fire on line 4. Wood feeds fire, so the 寅 Wealth line is its helper; water puts fire out, so the 子 Offspring line is its threat — and 子 and 午 clash as well. Ask about money instead and the focus moves to the 寅 Wealth line, its helper becomes the 子 Offspring line and its threat the 申 Siblings line. The labels stay; the roles change with the question.

When a relative is missing

A hexagram has six lines but often only four of the five relatives, as in Hexagram 44, Gou, which has no Wealth line. Tradition then looks in the palace's pure hexagram for a line holding the missing relative and treats it as a hidden spirit (伏神) lying under the line in the same position. A hidden focus is not absent, but it is harder to reach: the manuals read it as something present but not yet showing, and judge whether it can "come out" by its strength.

Where the tradition disagrees

The rule for assigning relatives is stable across schools. The details of reading them are not: books differ on how much weight a hidden spirit carries, on the exact range of meanings (the lists above are the common core, not a closed list), and on the gendered rule for relationship questions, which many modern readers find too narrow. Our tool uses Wealth for a man and Officer for a woman asking about a relationship, as the Qing manuals do, and falls back on the self and response lines when you leave gender unspecified.

How to use the relatives when you read a cast

• Find the palace first, then label every line from its element. On our result page the chart beside the text reading already shows each line's relative.
• Translate your question into a relative before looking at anything else: job → Officer, money → Wealth, paperwork or home → Parents, a child or relief → Offspring, a friend or rival → Siblings.
• Locate that line, its helper and its threat, and check which of them are moving.
• Do not judge a relative as good or bad in itself. Officer and Siblings are not unlucky lines; they are good or bad only for a given question.

When you cast a reading, choosing the area of life lets the in-depth Six Lines reading make this translation for you.